Former Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs: Trump Could Easily Make Mexico Pay for the Wall

Jorge Castañeda, who served as Mexico’s secretary of foreign affairs from 2000 to 2003, and who is currently a professor at New York University, appeared at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Wednesday. Castañeda, who cuts a debonair, cosmopolitan figure, exploded a couple of bits of received wisdom in his address.

Castañeda is certainly no fan of Donald Trump—he said that the property magnate’s ascension to the U.S. presidency would be a “tragedy.” Yet he also said that Donald Trump could quite easily “make Mexico pay” for a border wall—a claim that has been widely ridiculed by our betters in the media.

“If [Trump] really wants Mexico to pay for the wall, he has many ways of getting many Mexicans to pay for the wall,” Castañeda said in an auditorium sitting directly across the street from Trump’s newly opened Pennsylvania Avenue hotel.

He could “increase the fee for visas, which is a decision made by the State Department, not by Congress,” Castañeda continued. He could “increase the toll on the bridges [between the two countries] . . . again, not done by Congress.”

Castañeda also suggested that Trump could tax remittances from the U.S. to Mexico: “There are ways of doing it,” he said, “transaction fees, commissions, special fees etc.” He labeled a recent resolution in the Mexican Senate to bar the use of Mexican federal funds for construction of the wall as “silly.” (Somebody tell Castañeda’s old boss!)

Trump is so much smarter than anyone on the left will admit.

They won’t believe the wall will be built and paid for by Mexico until it happens.

1) the mexicans build the wall and are payed with billions USD notes.
2) the mexicans can no more go in USA to buy with their billions USD notes.
3) the mexicans billions USD now notes circulate in Mexico to exchange services.
4) USD notes are bonds with 0% interest and infinite duration.
5) you see that the mexicans have payed the wall: against printed paper!